Albert "Ginger" Baker

Albert Walker "Ginger" Baker (born c. 1951) Whilst in prison, he was interviewed by Labour MP Ken Livingstone; an edited transcript of their meeting appears in his book Livingstone's Labour.

British Army Albert Wallace Baker, known as "Ginger" after the drummer in the British rock group Cream, was born into a Protestant family in East Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1970, at the age of 19, he joined the 2nd Battalion of the British Army's Royal Irish Rangers (R Irish) regiment. He trained with the US Special Forces and was a member of the Special Air Service's (SAS) 22nd Regiment. Baker deserted in July 1972 and returned to Belfast. He had acquired an English accent during his time in the British Army.

Ulster Defence Association Upon his return to Belfast, Baker joined the UDA, which was the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. He joined the organisation long before it was proscribed in 1992. Baker was accepted into the movement and quickly became prominent as he possessed his own military firearm and had the ability to train other young members. According to journalist Martin Dillon, Baker "strutted around the streets of his native east Belfast with a swagger and assuredness lacking in other paramilitary men who did not have an army training". Rated highly by the local UDA leader Tommy Herron, he served as Herron's personal bodyguard for a time. He also acted as bodyguard for members of the UDA's ruling body, the Inner Council. Whenever it held meetings, usually inside an East Belfast hotel, Baker would patrol the premises carrying a firearm. This unit was described by journalist Maeve Connolly as having been as "repugnant as the Shankill Butchers". Fay had worked at the Girton Lodge Hotel, one of the locations used for UDA Inner Council meetings and as part of his job he had served drinks to the UDA leaders whilst they met.

This was followed a month later by the killing of another Catholic barman, Paul McCartan (52), who was abducted by the unit and brought to a UDA "romper room" for a "rompering". These notorious UDA "romper rooms" had been invented by UDA brigadier Davy Payne in the early 1970s. They were located inside disused buildings, lock-up garages or rooms above pubs and drinking clubs. Once inside, a victim would be "rompered" (brutally beaten and tortured), and then killed. After other members of the unit savagely beat McCartan, Baker then shot him to death. According to a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) report, members of a foot patrol had stopped a drunk McCartan as he walked along the Newtownards Road shortly before his abduction but had let him pass after he refused a lift home. However, Baker would later claim that the police had picked him up and had left him off just fifty yards away from where they knew the UDA gang was waiting.

In early October, James McCartan, a 21-year-old forklift driver from The Markets (no relation to Paul), was abducted from the lobby of the Park Avenue Hotel on the Holywood Road after a party. McCartan's friend John Jamison, a Protestant, had attempted to get him away from the gang but he was beaten as was McCartan's girlfriend and as Baker bundled him into the vehicle he yelled at Jamison "he's a Fenian bastard". He was brought to several UDA "romper rooms" located in UDA clubs in the Newtownards Road area - specifically in Finmore Street and Clermont Lane. McCartan was then stripped naked, hung up by the ankles and subjected to lengthy torture sessions at each club which included being beaten with a pickaxe handle, stabbed 200 times, and his head dropped down onto the concrete floor. The romperings were allegedly presided over by McCreery, and when they had concluded, McCartan was hooded, bundled in a car and taken to waste ground beside the Connswater River off Mersey Street where Baker shot him three times, killing him. According to testimony at the subsequent trial, the UDA drinking club in Clermont Lane opened during the rompering with several UDA members and their girlfriends arriving to drink and watch.

On 1 February 1973, Baker and McCreery mounted an attack on a bus which was transporting Catholic workmen in Kingsway Park, Dundonald, East Belfast. After Baker got the bus to slow down when he affected a limp crossing the street, he lobbed a hand grenade inside the vehicle, mortally wounding Patrick Eugene Heenan (47), a married man from Andersonstown with five children. Heenan had been a foreman on the construction site of a Catholic school in East Belfast. Not long after this (again, the exact date is unknown) Baker became "sickened and disgusted" by the UDA's activities and returned to his former regiment in England. He told Sergeant Anthony Godley that he had been involved in four murders and 11 robberies and wished to make a statement to that effect, although he cautioned initially that he would not reveal the names of any of his accomplices and was only interested in his own role in the attacks.

Baker was the first person to be tried in a non-jury Diplock Court. The trial judge, Sir Robert Lowry deemed Baker's evidence as "manifestly unreliable", and as a result, the judge dropped charges against McCreery and the other six men.

Whilst in prison, Baker began a letter writing campaign to the press making a series of allegations about collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries. He alleged that, far from being a deserter, his UDA activity had actually been sanctioned by the British Army and he added that the deputy commander of his UDA unit was also a member of the RUC. He was questioned by detectives regarding his allegations, although no further action was taken. Father Denis Faul, one of those Baker had written to, visited Baker in Frankland Prison to hear the details of his claims to having been a British Intelligence agent involved in collusion, as did the Daily Mirror journalist Paul Foot. He was also alleged to have worked for the Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF). According to Baker, his MRF handler was an officer in the Parachute Regiment and that during his time in the UDA, Baker lived at the officer's home in Holywood, outside Belfast. He also claimed that one of the RUC men who escorted him out of the court after he was given his twenty-five year sentence had been one of the same policemen who had previously supplied him with guns. Baker stated that "half the assassinations in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s would not have been committed without RUC backing". His brother told journalist Frank Doherty of the Sunday World that Baker had delivered the explosives used in the 1 December 1972 Eden Quay and Sackville Place bombings from Eglington, County Londonderry to a unit of the Belfast UDA, which had then driven the cars down to Dublin. According to Baker's brother, Baker had taken part in another cross-border bombing in Donegal. On 15 July 1993, the UVF released a statement in which it admitted to having carried out the 1974 bombings. According to the Irish News, the Irish Government had requested the British Government for permission to speak with Baker in prison about the attacks, for which nobody has ever been charged. That same year, his former associate Ned McCreery was shot dead by the UDA for being an alleged informer. Since his release from prison, Baker has made no further allegations against the Northern Ireland security forces.